Barclays PLC has raised its forecast for the growth of the nation’s GDP this year to 4.1 percent from its previous prediction of 3.6 percent. The optimism stems from the better-than-expected 3.84 percent growth seen in the second quarter.
Barclays said that economic expansion in the second quarter beat its expectation of 3.4 percent. The 3.84 percent increment was also higher than the government’s earlier forecast of a climb of 2.79 percent.
An economist with Barclays Leong Wai Ho (梁偉豪) said the data for GDP in the second quarter showed that the nation’s economic recovery is accelerating on the back of an upturn in exports.
Leong said that as the fundamentals in the US and China were recovering, the nation should continue to benefit from the upswing.
UBS AG said the nation relies heavily on net exports to drive GDP growth.
As a result, if Europe’s economy resumes expansion and US growth accelerates, GDP growth could outstrip the consensus forecast of 4 percent for this year, the Swiss banking giant said in a research report on Thursday.
Several local economic think tanks have forecast the economy should grow more than 3 percent this year. Academia Sinica last month raised its estimate for the country’s economic growth to 3.31 percent from a previous prediction of 2.89 percent.
For next year, Barclays said it sees the economy continuing to accelerate, forecasting a GDP growth of 4.5 percent.
However, Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong Ltd — which raised its GDP forecast to 3.3 percent for this year from 3 percent — said it retained the 3.3 percent growth estimate for next year.
“There is still the risk that credit conditions in China might deteriorate next year. Also, it is not clear that real investment in Taiwan can maintain current growth momentum,” Daiwa Capital Market said in a report on Thursday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained